2: Michael Stipe of R.E.M.
4: Robert Jordan
9: Neal Stephenson
12: Rudyard Kipling
13: Anthony Burgess
16: William S. Burroughs
17: James Fenimore Cooper
18: Charles Dickens
19: Stan Lee

15 reads like a badly-translated Super Nintendo game, but I'm unsure of the specific reference.

1. Biblical.
2. To the tune of "Losing my Religion", R.E.M.
4. A la Robert Jordan
9. A la Stephenson's Snow Crash.
10. In the style of e.e. cummings
13. A la Burgess's Clockwork Orange
15. All your base are belong to us!
17. In the style of James Fenimore Cooper.
18. A la Dickens's A Christmas Carol

#5 has to be Ogden Nash, if only for the spelling at the end.

#19 I want to say it's the Dark Phoenix bit from X-Men--that is, Jean Grey's death. Comic, not movie.

And Scott, you got the rest of mine. *shakes fist*

The Jordan one is high-larious.

Toward the end, #19's tone does veer a little in the direction of Stan Lee, but it's Chris Claremont.

Zeynep, glad to hear it. Involuntary expulsion of bodily fluids is the ultimate test of humor.

Tim, Doyle, the last time we played this, only assertions counted. Suggestions are just suggestions.

Doyle should definitely remove some of those question marks.

Funny, that.

#6 is sort of Pratchett-esque, I'd say. Could also be Hunter S. Thompson, although I'd expect Teresa to go for the much more recognizable "We were halfway to Rivendell when the drugs took hold..."
#7 sounds Hard-boiled, and Sam Spade-y, but Debra's probably got it.
#14 ...Paarfi? No...that can't be it...

1: Doyle
2: Scott Lynch
3:
4: Scott Lynch
5: Will Frank
6
7
8: Andrew Willett
9: Scott Lynch
10: Doyle
11
12: Scott Lynch
13: Scott Lynch
14
15: Tim Pratt
16:
17
18: Scott Lynch
19: Doyle

I'll give y'all one freebie. Nos. 6 and 7 are by the same author.

---L.

1. Genesis - the Bible one, not the band
2. R.E.M.'s "Losing My Religion"
3. lawyerese
4. BWAHAHAHA! Robert Jordan!
5. Dr. Seuss?
6. I'm gonna guess Elmore Leonard.

10. e.e. cummings, natch.

13. Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange
14. Sounds very Jane Austen to me.
15. Ha! Zero Wing.

17. Dumas?
18. Okay, it's Dickens, but I wouldn't have guessed that without the hint.
19. Clearly I don't read enough comics.

The rest, I didn't get even with the hints. Maybe I should check all the answers first, but hell, I'll just post my first swipe and look dumb.

Still giggling about the Jordan one.

I was going to guess Dashiell Hammett, but the only Hammett I've read isn't in the first person.

Wednesday, I made some deletions, but otherwise reproduced them as originally posted.

I'm having an attack of conscience. Doyle's question marks are firmer than many people's assertions. In this case, they probably mean "I can't identify the passage."

Foo.

Janet, is that or is that not Nathaniel Hawthorne?

Suzanne, do you assert that that's Raymond Chandler? Alternately, do you assert that it's Dashiell Hammett?

That leaves these guesses:

7 reminds me of John D "Travis McGee" MacDonald, more than anything. But I'm not even sure why.

I'm with Leigh on 17 being Dumas.

Let me second that. The line about Arwen unfolding her breasts is classic...

I have led you all astray on #17, because I screwed up the list and failed to credit Debra with James Fenimore Cooper. My apologies to everyone.

(In Dhalgren he goes on and on about the state of people's fingernails.)

Also too honest not to admit that I only had the vaguest idea about half of them. The rest...clueless.

That was before Google, of course.

Below, the not-quite-so-AFU list. Suggestions awaiting conversion into assertions have been ROT-13'd.

1: The Gospel according to St. John: Doyle
2: Michael Stipe, R.E.M.: Scott Lynch
3: Fg. Gubznf Ndhvanf (Doyle)
4: Robert Jordan: Scott Lynch
5: Ogden Nash: Will Frank
6: Raymond Chandler: Suzanne
7: Raymond Chandler: Suzanne
8: Lennon & McCartney: Andrew Willett
9: Neal Stephenson: Scott Lynch
10: e. e. cummings: Doyle
11: Fnzhry E. Qrynarl (Doyle)
12: Rudyard Kipling: Scott Lynch
13: Anthony Burgess: Scott Lynch
14: Angunavry Unjgubear (Janet)
15: All Your Base Are Belong To Us/Zero Wing: Tim Pratt, Will Frank
16: William S. Burroughs: Scott Lynch
17: James Fenimore Cooper: Scott Lynch
18: Charles Dickens: Scott Lynch
19: Chris Claremont: Doyle (Will Frank wanted to suggest it)

I can't place #6, but #7 is the opening paragraph from The Big Sleep.

Frodo jacked in.

He felt huge, invincible, unstoppable. Some small part of him knew that was the hits of pipe-weed talking, skewing his sense of self, making his nerves scream like they were being raked over rusted chrome. Knew, and didn’t care.

Over his shoulder he could feel Sam hovering, a hollow nonentity. It was eerie knowing he was back there, like having an itch in a limb long amputated. All around him the middle-matrix arced off into an impossible blue infinity, gridlines benchmarking the empty nonspace.

“There it is,” came Sam’s voice. “That’s the ice. Good luck breakin’ in there, man, that was made by a military AI. Name of ephelduath. You ain’t seen nuthin’ like it. They say it’s two-way ice. Not only will it fry your brainpan tryin’ to get in, nuthin’ inside can work its way out. Leastaways, not without sarumancer’s say-so.”

#11 is Samuel R. Delany.

I'm sorry to see that the pastiche author of #9 didn't do something with "Deliverator", like "Ringbearerator." I almost didn't read past page one of Snow Crash because of that word (very glad I did.)

Of course, it is to be expected, given that the dude Keeps. Churning. Them. Out. and it is frustrating trying to re-read the previous ones each time a new one comes out. (I gave up when I realized that he was on book 5 with no sign of stopping. If he stops, at long last, then I _might_ read them again. Otherwise, expecting me to read book 1 umpty-dum times is ridiculous.)

Karen, I'm going to split it between the two of you. It is indeed Samuel R. Delaney, grime and all -- and a good catch to spot it on that basis.

Obviously, Mars, being red and all, must be just lousy with scarlet emeralds. (They might even be naturally fauceted, since, like, things are different . . . in spaaaaaaace.)

I assert: Summa Theologica.

Doyle also asserts: "Teresa knows my question marks very well."

And I recall an occasion (near of sin?) of dropping you with a Scarlet Letter pun. That was some years ago; perhaps you don't remember.

"My dear Gandalf," I answered, laying down my egg-spoon, "why in the world should I do anything? My position is a comfortable one. I have an income nearly sufficient for my wants (no one's income is ever quite sufficient, you know), I enjoy an enviable social position: I am nephew to Bilbo Baggins and live in Bag End. Behold, it is enough!"

"You are three-and-thirty," he observed, "and you've done nothing but--"

"Knock about? It is true. Our family doesn't need to do things."

-------------

Just for y'all.

Even Teresa committed the dread "Delaney" misspelling, and she was once the co-publisher of one of his books!

I got 1, 4, 6 & 7, although 6 made me think at first that it might just *be* Terry Pratchett. But he doesn't usually fall into first person, so I went with Chandler after all, and I'm embarrassed that I didn't get 10. 19, however, made me terribly happy. *laugh*

I really feel I ought to have got 12. But I didn't. All the rest are writers I'm unfamiliar with anyway...

It's always splitsville for anything that needs to keep itself together. America split into Yankee and Dixie, and the South never got over it when the North blew their troops full of daylight, and torched a few towns. Same deal in Middle-earth. Arnor, the North of the Numenorean realms-in-exile, was founded by Elendil the Tall in 3320, Second Age, but even though it was rich and dripping with prestige, it got sloppy with its politics, and fell apart into three smaller states, which led inevitably to conquest and destruction. But the South, Gondor, spent a thousand years getting fat and rich. Like Los Angeles, Vegas, Houston, New Orleans, and Miami rolled into one, but with architecture that put New York and Chicago to shame. King Elendil ran both North and South, but when it hit the fan, he handed off the keys to Gondor to his number-one son, Isildur, and Isildur's little brother, Anarion. Isildur was born in Numenor, which sank beneath the wine-dark seas like Atlantis, like Titanic, in 3319 Second Age, which is why my story is full of refugee families getting back on their feet any way they could glom onto enough lettuce, mazuma, or spondulix. Money talks; nobody walks.

It was probably Isildur who dealt the death-stroke to Sauron, in battle, after chopping off Sauron's finger that bore the one-ring-to-rule-them-all, the Ruling Ring, and the big boss bit the dirt when this Harlem sunset went down.

But he wasn't really zotzed, it turns out. Sauron was no roundheels, no pug down with a glass jaw, but picked himself up after lying dormy, like a jasper waking up groggy in a flophouse the morning after a Mickey Finn got slipped into his eel-juice.

Where that ring went next is a long story, but let's grab the twisted thread where the halfling Bilbo Baggins was about to fade. Bilbo was a songsmith and scribble-jockey of no mean talent, but was too old to hit the book tour, and ink another best-seller like his "There and Back Again," which he wrote after his epic journey to the East of (2941-2 Third Age). That red book recounted the events leading up to the Battle of the Five Armies, the restoration of the Dwarf-kingship of Erebor; and a big stash of cash, kale, oyster fruit, ice necklaces, and the like in the cave of dragon named Smaug, whose firey breath left the stink of smog in his nostrils like a traffic jam on the Miracle Mile.

[half of chapter 1; the first posting, some time ago, was preface; footnotes excised]

I think it's Nova...

"Then it was quiet again. Sam had taken his shirt off, and was pouring beer on his chest, to facilitate the tanning process. 'What the hell are you yelling about, Master Frodo?' he muttered, staring up at the sun with he eyes closed and covered with wraparound Haradrim sunglasses."

(Because something someone else said lodged this in my head, and I needed to get it out...)

Prisoner of Zenda.

Chad Orzel: Hunter S. Thompson.

"Rage.

"Sing, O Muse, of the rage of Sauron, of Morgoth's lieutenant, murderous, Ring-forger, fated to die, sing of the rage that cost the Last Alliance so many good men and elves and sent so many vital, hearty souls to the Halls of Mandos and beyond. And while you're at it, O Muse, sing of the rage of the Valar themselves, so petulant and so passive there behind their safe walls, and of the rage of the Numenoreans, forgotten and diminished though they might be, and of the rage of those few true Eldar left, exiled and fading though they may have become. While you are singing, O Muse, sing also of the rage of those thoughtful, sentient, serious but not-so-close-to-human dwarves out there dreaming under the Lonely Mountain, dying in the halls of Khazad-dum, and being born in the Iron Hills.

"Oh, and sing of me, O Muse, poor bearer-of-burdens-too-great-for-mortals Frodo--poor Ring-Bearer Frodo Baggins, Frodo to his friends, to friends long since turned to dust in memories long since lost to the Ring. Sing of my rage, yes, of my rage, O Muse, small and insignificant though that rage may be when measured against the anger of the immortal Valar, or when compared to the wrath of the Ring-forger, Sauron."

"My surname is Gamgee and my personal name is Samwise, but I am not to be confused with any eminent authors. My family is quite undistinguished, and since I am the fifth of my father's children and employed as a landscaper I am usually referred to as 'Sam, the gardener at Bag End.'"

On the night in question, the Fellowship all went to sleep at about the same time. Boromir, as a matter of fact, had been in his sleeping roll all day with a kind of fever. He had not been delirious, but he warned us all that he might become delirious.

In the third watch, when wakefulness was on him, Boromir decided to pretend that delirium was on him, to, as he later explained to us, have some "fun." He went over to Frodo, shook him, and said, "Buck, give me the ring!" "Hmmm?" Frodo said. "Get up, Buck!" said Boromir coldly, but with a certain gleam in his eye. Frodo leaped up and shouted us all up.

We were naturally reluctant to believe that Boromir, who was quiet and self-contained, had threatened Frodo with any such abracadabra. Gimli went back to bed without any comment. "You've had a bad dream," said Aragorn. This vexed Frodo. "I tell you he called me Buck and told me to give him the ring!" We went to Boromir, who we thought was still sleeping; he lay on the ground, breathing easily, as if he were fast asleep. Aragorn gave Frodo a look. "I tell you he did." said Frodo.

On behalf of those of us with breasts, may I just say: Ouch!

The Balrog comes clumping out... Gandalf stands in the center of the bridge staff raised.

“You shall not pass! You will come no further. Your advancement shall halt right here for I shall stop you. All forward movement will cease immediately. Behind me is the other side, which you will not get to, for I will prevent it. You will try to use fire against me but it will not work for I, ... Gandalf, have come prepared with anti dark fire devices. The fire will fail, go out, and otherwise be completely ineffective. I shall not be burned for the fire will not work.”

The Balrog comes clumping out... Gandalf stands in the center of the bridge staff raised.

“You shall not pass! You will come no further. Your advancement shall halt right here for I shall stop you. All forward movement will cease immediately. Behind me is the other side, which you will not get to, for I will prevent it. You will try to use fire against me but it will not work for I, ... Gandalf, have come prepared with anti dark fire devices. The fire will fail, go out, and otherwise be completely ineffective. I shall not be burned for the fire will not work.”

(Of course, for me, The Professor is the obvious choice for Gandalf. Mojo would have to be Saruman, especially during the temptation-from-the-tower scene after the Ents - played by The People Of Townsville, with the Mayor as Treebeard - open up their can of whoopass.)

((Gods, I hope I got all those names right. I'm a relative newcomer to LOTR.))

"Another:
'I shall clasp my hands together...'"

The Wallet of Kai Lung's author?

My guesses (before reading the comment thread either):
I got 1 (Genesis), 3 (Sir Thomas Browne), 4 (P.G. Wodehouse), 5 (Ogden Nash), 15 (Zero Wing), and 18 (Dickens) well enough to be confident. At first I thought 19 was Rocky Horror, but then it sounded more like maybe Marvel?

In the Prancing Pony Aragorn son of Arathorn, wrapped in a weatherstained cloak, sat at his usual table and watched the hobbits tossing back beer and singing songs. Outside the inn clouds flew urgently away from the Shire. Every few moments lightning flashed through them, illuminating wraithlike shadows that rode toward their halfling prey.

The inn shook.

Wrapped in his cloak, Aragorn shook.

He wasn't afraid of the weather. --It's not just the weather, he thought. --It's the Ringwraiths on top of everything else. On top of me. On top of the hobbits doing eveything to draw attention to themselves.

("What does 'under the name of' mean?" asked Merry.

"It means that the hillside was called Bag End, and he lived under it," said Gandalf.)

"Pippin wasn't quite sure," said Merry.

"Now I am," squeaked a voice.

"Then I shall go on," said Galdalf.

The Red Book of Westmarch is a truly remarkable book. The introduction starts like this: "Hobbits," it says, are smallish folk with mind-bogglingly large, hairy, leathery feet. I mean, you may think you have trouble finding decent boots, but that's just peanuts to hobbits. Their feet are so big and tough that shoes themselves seem small and flimsy. Listen...."

After a while the style settles down a bit and the book starts to tell you something you might actually need to know, such as the fact that most of the Rings of Power were corrupted or destroyed, so if you should happen to find one, it is vitally important that you don't put it on.

We're told how religion suffuses much US culture (assuming many here are US citizens). I wonder if there's a different demographic spread here, or if there's not such an emphasis on bible memorizing as I'd thought?

http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=2004060323162776639%40zetnet.co.uk

It is, indeed.

Once upon a time, a rather long time ago now, about last Saturday, Bilbo Baggins lived with his nephew in a hobbit-hole, under the name Bag End.

I'm not sure exactly what the title would be, but this is A. A. Milne, one of the Winnie the Pooh books.

Another:
"Several centuries (or so) ago, in a country whose name doesn't matter, there lived a hobbit named Baggins, and not the one you are thinking of, either."

As to this thread:

Kate Nepveu is doing John Barth's Grendel. I am slightly surprised that I know this, since I have not read it.

Karen Funk Blocher's third is of course The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Chad's is the opening line of John Bellairs' The Face in the Frost.

(To cross-pollinate this thread with the "Michael Berube" one, I'll say that I recently read Face and after all I'd read praising it, was very disappointed. The anachronisms didn't work for me -- Peter S. Beagle did it much better -- and the ending was lame.)

Was indeed Anthony Hope, The Prisoner of Zenda

----

And I'd spelled Delany as "Delany," then checked with how Teresa had spelled it, and corrected my post.

Jim, you know I'm fallible on proper names.

And now off to work.

"My story has no drama; a land defended, vows unbroken, faith upheld. That is not the stuff of legend. I am nothing but an old hobbit, even if I am still Mayor of my beloved Shire. . . .

"Sixty years and one it is, since Mr. Frodo departed and yet my memories of him are still very clear. The years I traveled as his companion shine brightest of all the memories of my long life."

(And too easy besides, but I figured if I cut the first two lines it would be too hard.)

Shameless Thurberian self-promotion.

And now, with great trepidation, considering that there's someone here who edited the original:

I lived long enough to see the Elves depart for the Undying Lands; to see the rise of the Age of Men; to learn ten languages; to realize my mission given me by the Valar to aid Middle Earth in its wars with Sauron; to see the end of the Council of the Wise and of wisdom.

I never thought I’d live to see the day when Keep A-Stridin' Aragorn would decide to become King Elessar until the end of his days.

Aragorn was in his second or third blush of youth when I first met him, sometime late-A3. He was a rangy cowpoke, apparent 40 or so, all rawhide squint-lines and sunburned neck, boots worn thin and infinitely comfortable. He was taking a break from Saving the World, chilling in Bree and bouncing for some poor innkeeper. We hooked up at the Prancing Pony---the PraPo for those who knew---on a busy Friday night, spring-ish. I was fighting an Ent-slow battle for a stool at the scratched bar, inching my way closer every time the press of bodies shifted, and he had one of the few seats, surrounded by a litter of pipeweed junk and empties, clearly encamped.

Some duration into my foray, he cocked his head at me and raised a sun-bleached eyebrow. "You get any closer, son, and they're going to have to write a lay about us."

We're told how religion suffuses much US culture (assuming many here are US citizens). I wonder if there's a different demographic spread here, or if there's not such an emphasis on bible memorizing as I'd thought?

While I think the demographics here are probably indeed not reflective of the US as a whole, I'm not sure there's that much emphasis on Bible memorization as such. It's been a while since the days of Tom Sawyer.

In my own case, I thought it was Genesis (although it didn't quite match my memory) because I've never read any Gospels, not holding with those new-fangled books.

On another note, whatever Kate's first one is, is referring to the Iliad, but I don't recognize the work itself.

But I'm not.

And considering that I started the distributed audio project for "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom," (whic seems to have stalled, oh well...) that was an easy one.

And yes, I do assert it's Nathaniel Hawthorne for #14, mostly because I'm good at hints. And I checked after I posted to see if I was right.

I don't know how anyone could miss #18, but then I read A Christmas Carol annually and watch both the George C. Scott and Muppet versions each Christmas...

One of the reasons that One Hundred Trillion Planets, the novel manuscript I coauthored with Dr. Christine Carmichael, never sold was the opening line I wrote, for a chapter set on the Caltech campus:

"It was a stark and dormy night."

(I had a vision of Gandalf played by Tim the Enchanter, and went googling. This script is a bit uneven, but "On second thoughts, let's not go to Bombadil's. It is a silly place" and The Nazgul Who Say Ni have put a lasting smile on my face.
http://www.xenocorp.net/H_bardCorner/MPFotR.htm)

In the same strain of Frodo will I tell
Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme,
To whom strange journeys and Ringed evil fell,
A hobbit deemed so small in former time;
If Luthien, that is, who's brought me well
Nigh to despair, release my wit to mime
The Red Book Chronicles with meager skill--
Then I my daring promise can fulfil.

---L.

Which leads to #3. At first I thought Aquinas. But then I thought, maybe the Talmud?

I was on much surer ground with REM, Nash, e.e. cummings, and the Beatles. Even Cooper, and my brother's Classics Illustrated was the most of The Last of the Mohicans I could swallow, and I was about 8 then. I like Mark Twain's take on Cooper the best.

In which case I assert that a Modesitt pastiche could be accomplished simply by making each scene its own chapter, with Roman-numeral headings, which would end around

CMXCIX
"Well, I'm back," he said."

Simple mechanics don't make nearly as good a pastiche as any of the preceding posts -- and part of the trick is to get the essence into a small space, which neither of ours would do.

Report to the White Council

I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said-- "A vast and lidless eye of flame
Watches the waste.... Beside it, close at hand,
Half-built, a shattered tower stands, whose name,
And ancient use, and fear of old command,
Tell that its builder, who raged with passions well,
Still yet survives, stamped on some lifeless things,
The hands that wore them, and the hearts that fell;
And then the eye spoke words into the air:
'My name is Sauron the Great, Lord of Rings,
Look on my form, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside is said. Round the decay
Of Barad-Dur, once wrecked, boundless and bare
The ash of Mordor's Doom stretch far away."

---L.

* * * *

"Frodo Baggins, Gandalf the Grey," said the Gaffer, introducing us.

"How are you?" he said cordially, gripping my hand with a strength for which I should hardly have given him credit. "You have been in Bree, I perceive."

"How on earth did you know that?" I asked in astonishment.

"Never mind," said he, chuckling to himself. "The question now is about fire-letters. No doubt you see the significance of this discovery of mine?"

"It is interesting, alchemically, no doubt," I answered, "but practically—"

"Why, man, it is the most practical mystico-sorcerous discovery for years. Can't you see that it gives us an infallible test for lost Rings? Come over here now!"

* * * *

Night had come to Hobbiton in the Shire. Night, but not darkness or quiet. Snatches of cheerful talk and lively music spilled out through open doorways, and the low gurgling of briskly flowing river-water never stopped. Gandalf the Grey – tall and thin, with pale silver hair tucked back from a face too sharply planed for handsomeness – strode through the crowded square with a wizard’s fine disregard for the village-bound locals. The locals, in turn, took note of his purposeful air, and of his heavy walking staff gripped in a leather-tanned hand, and let him pass.

* * * *

John's first one is Sherlock Holmes ("A Study in Scarlet," perhaps?).

The other one seems very familiar, but I can't place it. LeGuin?

The first, of course, is _A Study in Scarlet_.

Correct, of course. I didn't think that would last long.

The other one seems very familiar,

This is as it should be.

but I can't place it. LeGuin?

Not even close. But I sense hysterical giggling in the background....

Another entry in this derby kept me up until 3 AM scribbling it, but I won't post the thing until I get home from work.

(Similarly, I started and abandoned "Yeah, I'm a Ranger of the North. We didn't go away in the nineteenth century, no matter what the Witch-King of Angmar tried to pull." as beyond my skills.)

(Also, I meant "twentieth century" (1900s, twentieth century, can never keep these straight, even when I bother to look up dates).)

Gollum Frodo's exit stalls.
From fatal bite, o'er lava walls
With ring and finger, Gollum falls.

Lamb, from Songs of Experience. Yours, I mean, not the one I thought better of doing.

I should wait to post another until someone at least pokes a stab at my first one. (Must. Resist. Verse.)

---L.

"If one finds a ring in a dark cave, or an enchanted blade in a grave-barrow, these he is allowed to keep."

If one finds a ring in a dark cave -- what is the reason for this? Thus said R. Yitzchak: It is because the owner of the ring would have been checking it at all times, and thus, he would have noticed when he lost it, and surely he would have said, "woe is me, for I have lost my preciousss," and as R. Zvid said in the name of Rabha, if one says, "woe it me, for I have lost my preciousss," he does not expect to recover it.

And of which rings are we talking? Rabha bar R. Chana says, "even the nine". Ullah says, "even the seven." Reish Lakish says, "even the three." R. Nachman says in the name of Shmuel, "This is only true of the One Ring, and that only because the One Ring is never truly lost by chance."

I should wait to post another until someone at least pokes a stab at my first one. (Must. Resist. Verse.)

Must have more verse.

So, to free your muse, I assert Orlando Furioso.

So, an easier one:

The Tower is of Night; perchance of Death
  But certainly of Night; for never there
Can come the elven morning's fragrant breath
  After the dewy dawning's cold grey air:
The ash and plains may lie in scorn or pity
The trees have never visited that city,
  For it dissolveth everything that's fair.

Dissolveth like dreams of twilight lands of yore;
  Though present in distempered gloom of thought
And deadly weariness from rings we wore.
  But when a dream night after night is brought
Throughout a week, and such weeks few or many
Recur each year for several years, can any
  Discern that dream in dooms that we have wrought?

For elves are but a dream: their ships returned,
  Once frequently, now seldom, in the night
Beside the bay, the twilight bay; we learned,
  The while Men changed and ages vanished quite,
In their recurrence by recurrent changers
A former Westron order; and these Rangers
  We raised to kings; such is bloodline's might.

---L.

"I will not give you the One Ring,
I don't trust you with such a thing.
I do not like your evil plan.
I do not like it, Saruman."

Lay ordinate and abcissa on Middle-Earth and cut me an age. Third Age, if you please."

Mordor pissed him off.

"Uh, hi, Gandalf. How you been?"

It is an ancient prophecy universally acknowledged that a young Halfling in possession of a Ring of Power must be in want of, well, it, though circumstances may intrude.

"Mistah Sauron -- he dead."

"Fly, my Nazgûl. Fly!"

We now return you to your regularly scheduled thread.

By the hilly side of Bag End
By the Shire of little hobbits
Lay the hole of Bilbo Baggins
Bane of dragons, Bilbo Baggins

And, back to prose for my vague attempt:

But I had seen first one and then another of the spaces in which I had slept during my life, and in the end I would revisit them all in the long course of my waking dream: places in Mordor, where on trying to sleep I would at once burrow my head into a shelter woven out of the most diverse materials -- the corner of my chainmail, the top of my tunic, a piece of a cloak, the edge of a rock, and the chain on which I held my Ring -- which I had contrived to cement together, bird-fashion, by dint of continuous pressure; places where, in freezing weather, I would suffer the torment of being shut out from the inner world (unlike other Hobbits, who build in holes in the hillsides and are kept warm by the surrounding earth), and where, a fire prohibited lest we be seen, I would lie awake wrapped up, in a great cloak of orc design, shadowed by the cover of clouds intermittently closing over the moon, a sort of alcove without walls, a cave of fear dug out of the heart of Mordor itself, a zone of terror whose boundaries were constantly shifting and altering in temperature as gusts of air traversed them to strike freshly upon my face, from the corners of the region or from parts near the stream or far from the fires of Mount Doom which had therefore remained cold....

Er... The sentence really ought to go on for quite a while yet, but I don't know how much longer I could keep that up.

***

When Gandalf walked into the Prancing Pony in Bree that evening, the regulars were discussing news from the South. "That Sauron is up to no good," one of the regulars was saying.

"No good? He's one of the Wise. Cleared Mirkwood and everything," said a second regular.

The owner, Butterbur, stood to one side of the bar putting up a poster ("REWARD for information regarding one Mr. Underhill of the Shire"). As he dropped a hammer on his foot, the first regular frowned. "No, different guy. Sauron hasn't been on this side of the continent in forever, let alone Mirkwood. You mean *Saruman*, not Sauron."

Butterbur, grimacing, stood up and thumped the hammer down on the bar. A third regular nodded. "Saruman the White. He bummed a pack of cigarettes off me once. Big talker, that one."

"The White?" said the second regular with scorn. "Not if he's a smoker, he isn't. Saruman the Dingy Yellow, maybe, but not the White."

Butterbur wadded up the poster and tossed it to one side, and then looked at Gandalf. "Guinness, right? Been a while," he said as he took out a glass.

"Yeah. Anyone been looking for me?"

"The bourbon; he's in the back room." Strider, then; Butterbur identified his customers by drink. "Got a stranger with him, little guy who wanted fish. I gave him a Jenny, told him closest I got."

"Thanks." Gandalf headed for the back room, leaving behind the regulars, who were now discussing whether the thrush involved in Smaug's death was a bird or a mouth infection.

Frodo put a single on the bar top. "Beer," he said to Butterbur, who slid him a pint a moment later. He drained it and walked up to the line. "To my burden," he said, throwing the glass into the fire. To follow it up, he pitched in a gold ring hanging on a chain around his neck.

I looked on. He knew something about the rules at the Pony, or he wouldn't have done that, but we were all wondering whether he'd decide to, well, unburden himself any further.

It was sort of a given once I thought about it, especially with the fireplace and the Ring...

---L.

The ringbearer's task:
Destroy the ring of power
Precious as it is.

Of course, I had to leave out a lot of detail.

MKK

When I heard the knock on the front door I was in the kitchen, boiling a pot of tea and smoking a pipe of Old Toby, which is the perfect way to pass the time while waiting for the kettle to whistle.

I wanted to ignore the door, not only because the pot was beginning to chirp, but because I had finally begun to blow truly fine rings of smoke through the window and out into the night air. Finally, though, I had to give in. It could have been somebody with news of Bilbo. I lowered the flame, went to the entrance hall, and opened the door.

"Ten minutes, please," said the tall man in gray without.
I'm good at recognizing people, but this odd fellow escaped my immediate recollection.
"Excuse me? To whom did you wish to speak?"
"To -you-, of course. Ten minutes please. That's all we need to understand each other." His voice was deep and gravelly.
"Understand each other?"
"Our mutual need for you to keep something secret, keep something safe."
I leaned back and peeked into the kitchen. The kettle had stopped chirping and was now whistling shrilly, and my pipe of Old Toby was still burning nicely.
"Sorry, but you caught me in the middle of making tea. Can I ask you to stop by later?"
"Tea? What in Elbereth's name are you making tea at three in the morning for?"
"That's none of your business," I said, "I decided what I drink and when I drink it."
"True enough. I'll call back," he said, his face now flat and expressionless. A little change in mood can do amazing things to a person's face.
"Hold on a minute," I said, before he could turn to leave, "If this has something to do with the Sackville Bagginses wanting Bag End, you can forget it. It's mine, and I'm not leaving it for anything."
"Oh ho. So you think."
"So I think? So I think what?"
"That you're not leaving your precious Bag End. You are. But go boil your stupid tea."
"Who the hell -"

But he turned and simply walked off.

(Apologies if I misspelled the place name.)

And, oh-so-obviously (did someone do this already?,

Call me Mithrandir.

The City Of Dreadful Night, James Thomson. Another poem I really need to run through a text-to-speech program to listen to on my commute.

BTW, I still love your Ben Johnson epigram.

For my own part:

Shagrat never overslept reveille. He always got up at once, because the next ninety minutes, until the captains put them to work, belonged to him, not to them, and any veteran could always earn a few favors: fixing a bit of chainmail for someone, or bringing some high-ranking Uruk their gear, or doing the rounds of the store-huts, sweeping this and fetching that.

These ambiguities, redundancies and deficiencies remind us of those which Doctor Saruman the White attributes to a certain Numenorean encyclopaedia entitled 'Celestial Empire of Benevolent Knowledge'. In its remote pages it is written that rings are divided into: (a) belonging to Sauron, (b) tacky, (c) fake, (d) for the Elven kings under the sky, (e) coveted, (f) fabulous, (g) for the Dwarf lords in their halls of stone, (h) included in the present classification, (i) for mortal men doomed to die, (j) precious, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, (l) et cetera, (m) having just slipped off the wearer's finger, (n) that from a long way off look like flies.

And thank you.

---L.

Chad: Borges. Don't remember the title, but our eminent hostess quoted the part of the original that you use once.

I'm admiring Karen's Xanadu pastiche. Wanted to do an Eldorado yesterday but it's just beyond me.

Meanwhile:

1.

Gollum leads you up to his stairway into Mordor
You can hear the orcs go by
You can stay entombed forever
And you know you’ve gone half-crazy
But that’s why you have to be there
And Sam feeds you out of dishes
Carried all the way from the Shire
And just when you want to tell him
That you cannot travel further
He takes you in his arms
And he lets his strong back answer
You’re not heavy, you’re his brother.

And we want to travel with them
And we want to read their tale
And we think we understand them
For the world in which we find them
Makes ours pale.

And Sauron was a voyeur when he sent out his nine Ringwraiths
He spent the last year watching
From Barad-Dur his tower
And when he knew for certain
That both elves and men were falling
He said, “all their lords will die except
The ones that heed my calling,”
But his dark power was broken
By a lowly injured Halfling
Never quite forsaken
You lost the Ring of Power
At Mount Doom.

(Chorus)

Now Sam leads you down to the base of the volcano
You can see the world is changing
By the dawn that’s late in breaking
And the eagles fly in beauty
To bear you and Sam to glory
And though you’re slow to heal, you’re with
The Ranger at his crowning
There are heroes from the Shire
There are men who are rebuilding
There are elves now looking out to sea
Who’ll sail away forever
And you too will be a sailor.

(Chorus)

2.
It was a long-expected party.
Suddenly, the host disappeared! The guests shouted. A gate slammed.
Suddenly, a Black Rider appeared on the horizon!

3.
I was out with Sam, my gardener. It was his year for following me around; he kept calling me Mister Frodo. He thought he was doing his duty by me. Gandalf’s fault. Ha, ha.

He’d cooked a couple of coneys for me, with herbs, no taters, reluctantly helped by Gollum, who’d since gone off on his own.

I’d eaten pretty good, but I was cranky. “Come on, son of a bitch,” I demanded, “find me a way out of this damned wasteland.”

3a.
“Repent, Gandalf!” said Saruman.
“Get stuffed!” said Mithrandir.

3a. Ellison, "Repent, Harlequin! Said the Ticktockman"

cd, David Goldfarb:
Dan's right. It's Foucault quoting Borges. Also, the original is not "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbus Tertius", but an essay entitled "John Wilkins' Analytical Language".

It is Borges, but the story is "The Analytical Language of John Wilkins."

Last one. Really. We're getting in the car and leaving town after this:

so much depends
upon

a ring of
power

borne through dark
places

by a simple
hobbit

A brilliant conversion of Eliot's Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock. Kudos!

She was just 2,710
And you know what I mean
And the way she looked was way beyond compare
So how could I seek the throne of Gondor for another
When I saw her standin' there

And the other is "I Saw Her Standing There," which I'm crediting to the Beatles.

Oh, and Chad: You may find it interesting to know that William Carlos Williams ("The Red Wheelbarrow") went to my high school. No one escapes without having read that poem, and few manage to like it.

I'm just grateful we don't have to read "Paterson."

(Teresa, you have a summer intern who went to that school as well, right?)

I don't know about the rest of you, but, personally, I cannot read that snippet without hearing in my head:
Elf booty got soul!
Elf girls like to rock-and-roll!

They say the balrog and the goblin keep
The courts where Durin feasted and drank deep
And Balin son of Fundin? The wild orc
Stumps past his tomb, but he is fast asleep.

Look what I found
In a cave
Dark as a grave.
It's a magic ring.
It's a precious thing.
I put it on to vanish.
Its hold on my thoughts grows.
Should I pass it on now?
Gandalf knows.

Not the first use of this writer here, but it's from my favorite book by him.

. . . . .

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through Gondor streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely Dunedain in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?…

I should have been a pair of Entish roots
Scuttling across the forest floors of Entmoots.

. . . . .

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by my nine remaining fingers,
Asleep … tired … or so slowly healing,
Stretched on the Bag End bed, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and lembas in the Second Breakfast,
Have the strength to force the Fellowship to crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald] brought in upon a platter,
I am no Gandalf -- and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the Hairy-Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the Misty Mountain marmalade, the tea,
Among the Westmark porcelain, and talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while, however weary,
To have bitten off the conversation’s finger with a smile,
To have squeezed all Middle-earth into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming query,
To say: “I am Gandalf, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all” --
If one, splitting hairs in deconstructed Theory,
Should say: “That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all.”

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and circular doorways and road ever on,
After the Book of Mazarbul, the teacups, skirts that trail along the floor --
And this, and so much more? --
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a Palantir threw nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling an Eagle-feather pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
“That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.”

. . . . .

No! I am not Prince Isildur, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant Hobbit, one that will do
To fill a Fellowship, steal a scene or two,
Carry a golden Ring; no doubt, an easy tool,
Looking out behind me at a pool of Gollum drool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Honest, frightened, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse compared to Bilbo;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old … I grow old …
I shall print my chapter headers semibold.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel breeches, barefoot upon the beach.
I have heard the Numenoreans singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have dreamed the White Fleet seaward on the waves,
Cirdan the Shipwright sailing to the West
When wind wears water white upon its vest.

We have lingered in the landlocked Sea of Rhun
Beyond Rhovanion, seaweed maroon and brown
Till Elven voices wake us, and we drown.

The Ring that can be melted is not the One Ring.
The Dark Lord that can be killed is not the true Lord.

Surely some reckoning is at hand;
Surely the Fourth Age is at hand.
The Fourth Age! Hardly are those words out
When an image from the Red Book of Westmarch
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the Shadow Land of Mordor
A shape with dragon cunning and an eye inhuman,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is spreading its black tentacles from Barad-dur, below
Reel shadows of Gorgoroth desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That thirty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by Morannon iron,
And what gold Ring, its hour come round at last,
Staggers towards Orodruin to be unmade?

And she says Samwise you're really bringing me down
And he says Rosie sometimes you can really bite
He says I've wasted my life
On our stupid legend
When my one and only love
Was the Barrow-wight.

She says What's his story?
And he says History is a Nazgûl
Being blown backwards
Into Mordor.
History is a pile of dead trees
And the Nazgûl wants to come here
And fix Rings
To repair the Rings that have been melted
But there's a storm blowing from Valinor
And it keeps on blowing the Nazgûl
Backwards
Into Mordor
And this storm
This storm
Is called Gan
Dalf.

I believe that'd be Sir Thomas Wyatt, Who so list to hounte, I know where is an hynde.

Somewhere, my highschool British Literature teacher just got a smile on her face, and she doesn't know why...

It helped me get the fishes sweet
So now there's nothing I can eat
I'll waste away to skin and bones, Bilbo.
You could have your choice of rings
From dragon hoards, and other things,
But that's the only ring for me, Bilbo.

I talk about it in my sleep
There's nothing I can do to keep
From cursing when I say your name, Bilbo.
I'll track it down, I tell you true,
And there is nothing I won't do
To get my ring back from your hand, Bilbo.

Bilbo, Bilbo, Bilbo, Bilbo
I'm begging of you please don't take my ring
Bilbo, Bilbo, Bilbo, Bilbo
I cannot live without that precious thing.

FAT black Orcs in a wine-barrel room,
Uruk-hai kings, with feet unstable,
Sagged and reeled and pounded on the table,

Pounded on the table,
Beat an empty barrel with the flat side of a sword,
Hard as they were able,
Dark Dark LORD,
With the handle of an axe, and the flat side of a sword,
Enemies Gored, Dark Dark LORD.
THEN I had religion, THEN I had a vision.
I could not turn from their revel in derision.
THEN I SAW THE ANDUIN, CREEPING THROUGH THE BLACK,
BETWEEN GONDOR AND ITHILIEN WITH NO TURNING BACK.
Then along that riverbank
A thousand miles
Morgoth-bred murderers danced in files;
Then I heard the boom of the blood-lust song
And a Hobbit-bone beating on a tin-pan gong.

And "BLOOD" screamed the whistles and the fifes of the warriors,
"BLOOD" screamed the jagged-fanged scimitar-carriers,
"Praise to Azog, who slew King Thror,
Hail to Leader Ugluk and to Chief Grishnakh,
Kill all the Dwarves, kill all the Elves,
Kill the Men of Gondor,
And eat them yourselves!
It’s good to be the Horde, Dark Dark LORD.
A roaring, epic, monster mash.
From the north of Wilderland
To the Bay of Belfalas.
Death is an Oliphaunt,
Torch-eyed and horrible,
Foam-flanked and terrible.
DOOM, kill the Hobbits,
DOOM, kill the Elves,
DOOM, from Thangorodrim,
DARK DARK LORD.
Listen to the yell of Sauron the Great,
From the pits of Hell through the tall Black Gate.
Hear how the goblins chuckle and yell
Of One Ring forged in Orodruin, hot as Hell.
Listen to the creepy proclamation,
Blown through the lairs of the desert-nation,
Blown past Mirkwood and the Misty Mountains,
Blown past the marsh where dead warriors float,
Blown to Ethir Anduin, south of Dol Amroth: --
"Be careful what you do,
For Great Lord Sauron, Lord of Dol Guldur,
With all of the other
Killers of Mordor:
One Ring to rule them all,
One Ring to find them.
One Ring to rule them all
And in the darkness bind them!"

And he had served Kings Thengel and Ecthelion,
And he was Elven-human when he talked;
And he was handsome as Viggo Mortensen,
Raised by Elrond, glittered when he walked.

And he was Heir of Isildur, someday a king,
And schooled by Gandalf in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we trudged, to guard the golden Ring,
In Fellowship, and munched the Lembas bread;
And Aragorn, one calm summer night,
To Elven Princess Arwen Evenstar was wed.

"Richard Cory", Edwin A. Robinson

Y'all are making me wish I were good at this.

But at my back I always hear
Time's winged Nazgul hurrying near;
And yonder all before you lie
Gorgoroths of eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be free,
Once you have crossed the Western Sea.
My echoing song can't reach you then,
In Elrond’s holiday regimen,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust.
The grave's a fine and private place,
But none I think do there embrace.

Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on my skin, like dream-flower dew,
While thy Lothlorien soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
So let us sport us now henceforth;
Like am'rous Eagles of the North,
Rather at once our time consume,
Than starve on his dry as dust perfume.
Let us climax my harangue,
And your sweet song, in one Big Bang;
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough Morannon iron gates of life.
Galadriel's got the Adamant Ring:
Thus, though I'm mortal, let's have our fling!

Jo: so, that's a good thing, then? Cool.

JVP: You can't do "Richard Cory" with a happy ending! You need Frodo at the Grey Havens, or something.

That's a very acute comment! I took a chance on the irony of a happy ending where you expect an unhappy ending, in inverted homage to a poem with an unhappy ending where you expect a happy ending, and I agree with you that it doesn't entirely work. I'd also correct, after the fact, "he had served Kings Thengel and Ecthelion" to "he had served King Thengel and Ecthelion" since Ecthelion II was really the 25th Ruling Steward of Gondor, and Denethor II's dad. Ecthelion II began to outsource forign policy, and hired the freelance consultant Aragorn II.

JeanOG:

Don't let anyone's success ever deprive you of your right to achieve. Some people make it look easy, but that's usually an illusion. A rich man I admire drummed into my head: "repetition gives the illusion of intelligence." I can sometimes write well, by having written for intended publication several times a week for 4 decades, and endured at least 5,000 editorial rejections.

Karen Funk Blocher:

You're right about Yeats. I'd call this pastiche/homage "The Second Coming of the Second Age."

Again, it takes great chutzpah for mere mortals to dare combine the poetic genius of two immortals per poem. Hence I thank Teresa for throwing the gates wide, that we might all do so without seeming singularly impertinent.

I would deepen the metaphor for 'combine,' above. This sort of improvisation, which used to be done so well in the pages of Mad Magazine, is akin to the genetic operation of Crossing Over. First, one performs "Artificial Selection" of two poems with high Darwinian Fitness: having met the test of time, and bred other poems through influence. Genes from the "mother" poem are shuffled in with genes from the "father" poem.

This has to be done in the context of poetic "regulation", that is, within semantic constraints of atmosphere, tone, style, and diction. One throws in a dash of Point Mutation: changing a single word in an unexpected way; and Inversion, taking two things in the opposite order. An exquisite attention to rhyme (or at least off-rhyme), rhythm (though I screw with the count to squeeze in extra stuff sometimes), syntax, and semantics.

That this works at all in these examples over which I've sweated these past few hours, is not so much a tribute to my skill, but to the astonishing power of Tolkien's story, characters, and resonant nomenclature. Saint Swanwick and others have demonstrated that a great story can survive extremes of translation, which may be why Shakespeare and Homer are the two hottest authors in Hollywood. But again, in that domain, I bow to John M. Ford; in poems written to challenge, to Joe Haldeman; and to all Rhysling Winners for upholding high the Olympic Torch of Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry.

We all have our strengths and weaknesses. This sort of game happens to be one of my weaknesses, and I wish I had the time to bang my head against that wall and try to come up with something good enough to share. That's all I meant.

Frodo woke, cold.

It's not great but I guess it'll do.

KVB: John Donne, "Death Be Not Proud."

Hey, at least I get the obvious ones!

Thank ye kindly. And now you've put a bit of a worm in my head and I'll have to dig out Mirror Dance or maybe Memory, though I have Much Else To Do This Week... hm, Gollum's schizoid nature equivalent to Mark's Black Gang, etc...Aurgh!! no, must write boring paper on interlibrary loan! Go away and never come back!

Jonathan, those are great -- especially the Second Coming!

KVB sounds more exotic, somehow, doesn't it? But I knew whom you meant.

Nobody ever identified my first Ellison entry from several days back. Funny how sometimes a single line is more easily identified than a longer passage. For example,

"Limp, the body of Deagol lay...."

KFB

But on his hand a golden Ringe he bore,
  The foule remenmant of its evil Lord,
  For whose dreade sake that daungrous round he wore,
  Who living wights he ever had abhor'd:
  Upon his chest a wound was also scor'd,
  That never healed, tho kinges his help he had:
  Right faithfull true king was in deede and word,
  But kingesfoill ne could ease him dollefull sad;
And Morgulle did he dread, and ever had ydrad.

Upon a dyre adventure he was bond
  That greatest Gandalff Grayhame to him gave,
  That greatest wizard of the Middle Lond,
  To wreck the ring, and free menns deathes to stave,
  Which of all earthly things he most did crave;
  And ever as he trudg'd, his hart did burn
  To feare despaire would not then hold him brave
  Upon the crack, and needefull force would learne;
Upon the crack of Doome, most horrible and stearne.

---L.

Open: volcano
Eagle releases old ring.
Loud splash. Film ends: no sequels.

Open: volcano
Eagle drops old ring. Loud splash.
Film ends: no sequels.

Jon, is that an assertion or a guess?

---L.

Larry: With that language and rhyme scheme it must be Spenser; and since that setup doesn't look like it belongs in The Shepheardes Calender, I'll assert that it's The Faerie Queene.

Karen FB's

Look what I found
In a cave
Dark as a grave.
It's a magic ring.
It's a precious thing.
I put it on to vanish.
Its hold on my thoughts grows.
Should I pass it on now?
Gandalf knows.

Look what we found
In a park in the dark --
We will take it home,
We will call it Clark.
It will live at our house,
It will grow and grow.
Will our mothers like this?
We don't know!

---L.

Then the ancient Bombadillo
Made this answer to the grey-cloak:
"Know I well the source of elfkind,
Know the origin of mankind;
I can tell how souls are fashioned.
Varda is the first of mothers,
Eldar are the oldest brothers,
And the Khazad second brothers,
And the youngest brothers, Edain;
Eru is the first creator.
Eru, maker of the heavens,
Cut apart the air and water,
Ere were born the lamps of Arda.

That's the Kalevala.

>

My copy of One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish is hiding from me, but that's the right piece, semi-accurately quoted. I'm glad somebody recognized it!

From the same book:

My vest is old.
My feet are cold.
I have a ring I like to hold.
Now I am off.
My home is sold.

Now I am off.
My home is sold.
I have a ring I like to hold.
My vest is old.
My feet are cold.
And now my story is all told.

Karen

---L.

T. S. Eliot, writing for the Times Literary Supplement, produced a series of roughly 3,000 word essays (most famously one on Hamlet) before 1920. In 1919 he published, in TLS, "Tradition and the Individual Talent."

He gives an unusal spin to the notion that poets must depend upon tradition, when he says that tradition is not handed down to us directly: "it cannot be inherited, and if you want it, you must obtain it by great labour."

Once you have it, you should write poetry: "with a feeling that the whole of literature from Homer... has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order."

On the other hand, he also says, in "Phillip Massinger" [in Essays on Elizabethan Drama]:

"One of the surest tests is the way in which a poet borrows. Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take; and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different."

Good point!

K

(Hint: When you look into the abyss, a falling wizard and hellbeast may look back at you.)
===========================

"Now that you're king, shut up and kiss me, you big lug," she cried, her noticeable assets shifting pleasantly in her cantilevered dress.

(Hint: Bilbo is the true Tolkien Individual.)
=====================================
"Who is Frodo? Frodo is the first hobbit not to be ashamed of his own ability to rule the entire world with this Ring, the first not willing to see it fall onto the finger of a second-hander with a weak chin."

"And since I realise that Arwen is the only rationally-suitable woman, elf or human, for Aragorn, I, Eowyn simply checked the premises for the next-most-rational choice for myself, deciding on Faramir by virtue of his self-consistent embodiment of underlying moral principle, and not for the swell of his buttock or the reputed largness of his Quality."

I take it that the last of your fine examples is "by" Ayn Rand?

Supporting Evidence:

Both books feature the following elements in common:

Use of psychic powers to predict or influence the outcome of a war.

People who live in holes in the ground

A smith/artisan class that fights in tunnels and sings strange songs

Tentacled beast guards shallow waters

A military occupation government tolerates the smuggling of pipe-weed by riverboat.

and, as if that weren't enough: the official source of authorized Lord of the Rings merchandise is lotrshop.com

lotrshop is an anagram of Slothrop (the name of the protagonist of Gravity's Rainbow)

Coincidence or what? you decide...

Also plot parallels can be found between LOTR and Pynchon's Vineland if you construe the teenage daughter character as corresponding to Frodo.

I have said this before on other threads, just thought it would be worth re-capitulating here.

It is beyond my skill as a writer to do a pynchonesque spoof of LOTR. But I am proud to have figured out this much while contemplating the exercise...